It’s easy to imagine why the Shazam! Fury of the Gods filmmakers would share their boy-to-Joe-Rogan-guest hero’s imposter syndrome. The magical ability to transform into a jacked Zachary Levi isn’t something anyone is envious of, and it certainly hasn’t solved the life of rowdy orphan Billy Batson (Asher Angel). Instead, it’s introduced a host of new problems familiar to those well-versed in superhero lore (specifically Spider-Man, quintessential high-schooler): His family is threatened, his ability to help his city is under criticism by the media and he’s not sure that he’s worthy of this great power—let alone this great responsibility. He’s quickly risen to the ranks of Wonder Woman and Superman, but at heart, he’s just a goofball kid.
With the first Shazam!, director David F. Sandberg and writer Henry Gayden capitalized on the abject joylessness of DC films by making the first half of their movie into a funny viral-video riff on coming of age in a superpowered world. The second half devolved into the same messy tropes that’ve come to define superhero films as a form, but there was a spark. There was personality.
Four years later, Fury of the Gods is no longer a novelty. Comic characters poking fun at themselves is the standard; the person doing it best at DC, James Gunn, is now running their superhero business. That leaves Sandberg and Gayden (whose script was co-written, tellingly, by resident Fast & Furious scribe Chris Morgan) as representatives of the blockbuster franchise version of the Peter principle. They haven’t been promoted past their point of competence, but rather were competent and creative enough to see their competence and creativity consumed by the expansive demands of the Superhero Sequel Model. Shazam! wasn’t the most exciting or heartfelt of superhero movies, but it knew how to use its gimmick. Fury of the Gods grows in scope and scale, drowning that gimmick in mediocrity. Like I said, it’s easy to imagine its creators empathizing with a hero feeling out of his depth—especially when the scene directed with the most joy is a crass mid-movie Skittles commercial. One of the biggest takeaways from Fury of the Gods is that Sandberg probably just wants to direct Super Bowl ads.
If only Fury of the Gods was able to use any of this insight. As a former and current employee, overseen by a boss, I understand why it wasn’t. Everyone’s gotta answer to someone, and Shazam! has to answer to the boring Superhero Sequel Model. If emotion or character grew beyond the three lines of screenplay dedicated, systematically, to each brazenly shoehorned developmental beat, there might not be room enough for the endless barrage of lore-deepening set pieces. Fury of the Gods pits a family of six young heroes against a mythic sisterhood of three villains—something was going to fall through the cracks. You just wish it wasn’t everything that made the first movie watchable.
In its place are elements now so familiar you’d swear they’d been directly lifted from one of the other forgettable comic films clogging the theaters. An enchanted pen, silently transcribing the verbatim ramblings of Billy and his siblings, is as desperate a grasp at silent comedy as Doctor Strange’s cloak (itself an imitation of Aladdin’s carpet). The ill-defined powers of Rachel Zegler’s Anthea—the youngest-looking of those villainous sisters alongside the wooden Lucy Liu and Helen Mirren—rearrange the world with the same insubstantial architectural swirling as Spider-Man: No Way Home. Is it a tragedy of genre saturation, both movie-haltingly flashy and deeply unimpressive. Everything is constantly moving and you don’t feel a thing.
Buried underneath this, catching our attention like real human skin on a green screen, is a reminder of why Shazam! worked—and even this feels wild-eyed and desperate, perhaps because it knows it’s under siege. Billy’s foster brother Freddy (Jack Dylan Grazer) remains the scene-stealing motormouth, something the filmmakers recognize by all but removing the kid-to-adult dynamic from the other characters—including the ostensible protagonist. Angel could’ve shot his scenes in an afternoon, making Levi’s “I’m just a slang-slinging kid” shtick feel gratingly unmotivated. Grazer is still a talent, but one so starkly prized over the rest of the cast that he’s allowed to overdo everything he’s otherwise good at. He gets a romance, a sneaky spy scene, a weepy mourning moment and endless quips after being physically beaten. It’s all too fast, too big, too pleased with itself. His performance needed direction, but one imagines Sandberg clapping joyously off-camera, simply grateful that someone is enlivening his two hours of concept art.